Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs

Samantha Parkington is a character from the American Girl product line of dolls, clothes, books, movies, and accessories that have been developed as a way of teaching history to young girls. Each character, usually a preteen, lives during a different time and in a different setting in America. Nine-year-old Samantha lives in New York just after the turn of the century (1904). Valerie Tripp is the author of the American Girl book series. The novel was adapted for the screen by Canadian screenwriter Anna Sandor.

That was a stereopticon, a sort of early slide projector, invented in 1850, that allowed a person to view realistic photographs one at a time. Like today's slide projectors, photographs could be viewed in certain orders in the stereopticon so as to tell stories.

From about 1850 to 1930, homeless and abandoned children, many of them immigrants and/or orphans, from New York City and other large cities in the eastern United States, were sent out West on "Orphan Trains." The goal was to place them in homes in rural areas where they would be cared for and loved by their new families. In some cases, that was the outcome. In others, children (especially the older ones) were selected merely to serve as farmworkers, servants, or in factories. Although Nellie (Kelsey Lewis) was not afraid of hard work, she did not wish to be sent West on the orphan train because it would most likely end up separating her from her sisters, Bridget (Hannah Endicott-Douglas) and Jenny (Olivia Ballantyne).